Ukraine’s hopes for speedy accession to NATO have been dashed, a member of the Verkhovna Rada, Aleksey Goncharenko, said on Telegram on Tuesday. He claimed that Washington is so “annoyed” at the idea, it has forbidden its European allies from even bringing it up.
Kiev made membership in the military bloc a strategic goal of its foreign policy in 2017, and submitted a formal application to join in the autumn of 2022, after four of its former regions voted in a referendum to join Russia.
Moscow has repeatedly said that it considers Ukraine’s potential NATO membership, along with the bloc’s expansion eastward, to be a major security threat. President Vladimir Putin has said that Kiev’s desire for NATO membership was one of the major reasons for Russia’s military operation in the neighboring state.
“There will be no NATO,” Goncharenko said in his Tuesday post, citing an “insight” he supposedly received from unnamed US officials in Washington. According to him, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explicitly told America’s European allies to stop raising the issue.
The issue of Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership “annoys the elites of the USA and they [have] clearly signaled that Ukraine will not become a member” of the bloc even after its ongoing conflict with Russia ends, Goncharenko argued. Kiev might receive some “favors” but nothing more substantial, he said, adding that Ukraine would certainly not become a part of the bloc next year.
According to the lawmaker, the government of President Vladimir Zelensky has already accepted this and is now focused on EU membership instead. No American or European officials have commented on Goncharenko’s statements so far.
Earlier this week, the MP also claimed that Kiev’s strategy to win further favor from its Western backers has largely failed.
“All this crap of ours about protecting democracy, European values and the whole of Europe is not working,” he said, adding that it is simply “not true.” The US is capable of defending itself without help from Kiev, while the Europeans expect America to defend them, he explained.
The lawmaker also noted that Russia has “stabilized” its economy, increased the number of troops, enhanced military production, and turned its army into the “second in the world” over the course of the conflict.
If Moscow succeeds in its military operation against Kiev, “no army on the continent would be able to put up any resistance to it for more than a week,” Goncharenko said.
He argued that Kiev desperately needs a change of strategy and called on Zelensky’s government to offer Washington unconditional support in all its military endeavors around the world, in exchange for continued assistance in the conflict.
Goncharenko expressed similar sentiments in October, when he said Ukraine has “no chance” against Russia without continued US support.